Compliance Guide to Small Entities

This description should not be interpreted as a comprehensive statement of the regulation. Rather, it is intended to give a broad overview of the regulation's requirements. The full regulation is available on the Government Printing Office web site.

Regulation C implements the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The purposes of HMDA are

To provide the public with information that will help show whether financial institutions are serving the housing credit needs of the neighborhoods and communities in which they are located;

To help public officials distribute public-sector investments so as to attract private investment to areas where it is needed; and

To identify possible discriminatory lending patterns and enforce antidiscrimination statutes by requiring the collection and disclosure of data about applicant and borrower characteristics.

A general description of the regulation, by section, follows.

Section 203.1 Authority, purpose, and scopeStates that the regulation is intended to provide the public with loan information and disclosures.

Section 203.2 DefinitionsDefines key terms used in the regulation.

Section 203.3 Exempt institutionsSpecifies the types of institutions that are exempt from compliance, such as a financial institution not in a metropolitan statistical area or one having less than $30 million in assets.

Section 203.4 Compilation of loan dataStates that for each calendar year, a financial institution must report data, by census tract, on its origination and purchases of home-purchase and home-improvement loans. It must also provide data on loan applications that did not result in originations: loan denials, withdrawn applications, applications that were approved but not accepted, and application files that were closed for incompleteness.

Section 203.5 Disclosure and reportingStipulates that the HMDA loan/application register (HMDA-LAR) must be submitted to the financial institution's regulatory agency by March 1 following the end of the calendar year in which the data were collected. An institution's home office must make its disclosure statement and its HMDA-LAR available to the public. This information must be retained for at least three years for examination purposes.

Section 203.6 EnforcementStates that a violation of the regulation is subject to civil money penalties.